Lurid and sensationalized events such as the public response to Lorena Bobbitt after she cut off her abusive husband's penis, prurient fascination provoked by Anita Hill's allegations about Clarence Thomas, and the exploitation of the mass murder of fourteen women in Montreal have been processed through popular culture since the 1990s to produce pervasive misandry - contempt for men, the counterpart of misogyny. Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young believe that this reveals a shift in the United States and Canada to a worldview based on ideological feminism, which presents all issues from the point of view of women and, in the process, explicitly or implicitly attacks men as a class. They argue that ideological feminism is silently reshaping law, pubic policy, education, and journalism. "Legalizing Misandry" offers lively and compelling evidence to demonstrate the pervasiveness of this new thinking - from the courts, classrooms, government committees, and corporate bureaucracies to laws and policies affecting employment, marriage, divorce, custody, sexual harassment, violence, and human rights.
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"Legalizing Misandry is a tour de force that exceeds even Spreading Misandry in power and persuasion." Don Browning, University of Chicago
About the Author
Paul Nathanson is a researcher, religious studies, McGill University, and author of Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz as a Secular Myth of America.<br><br>Katherine K. Young is James McGill Professor, religious studies, McGill University. She has published e
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
68 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Misandry Courageously Discussed by Scholars,
By Hu(man) (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men (Hardcover)
Following on their study of the systematic hatred of men (misandry) in the popular media--SPREADING MISANDRY--two Canadian scholars present in this volume the second of a trilogy on the topic. The third will discuss misandry as it is being proselytized in college and university classrooms. They have no need for shocking journalistic revelations and rhetoric, but rely instead on sober, close examination of court decisions that have slowly but surely changed the way men are treated under the law in Canada and the United States. The authors show how interest groups, lobbying and media pressure have leveraged a sea change in the treatment of men, especially as husbands and fathers. Their position is ethical. The focus of their examination is ideological feminism's effect on the framing of legal sanctions by our nation's courts that are stacked against men. As a result of the influence of ideological feminism, certain topics may not be discussed in academe, the media will always support its agenda, and increasingly in the home, husbands and fathers are identified as dangerous and evil. Demonizing men in this way is the work of misandry. Its sources are complex, but they rest solidly in ideological feminism. The authors' plea is for reasoned consideration of misandry and exposure of its motives. After reading this book, no one can fail to admit that we have reached a point where it is increasingly thought to be a shame to have been born male in North America. And we cannot forget that what is promoted here soon sends out spores to settle and grow elsewhere in the world. For now, this reader is grateful to the authors of this volume in the series of their studies for their courage in offering a point of view that those who are in academe know quite well MAY NOT be brought up in committee and faculty meetings and, soon, in all classrooms.
My worry is above all for boys, the sons and students of men who are portrayed as evil, not only in the popular media but also increasingly in the eyes of the law. That boys are leaving school should not surprise us at all. That fathers are leaving their sons is also no less unpredictable in such a climate. Scholars of divorce may find a fuller understanding of their topic by reading this volume of Nathanson and Young's trilogy. It must be made clear that this is NOT an exercise in victim studies. Nor do the authors call for a counter-revolution to the positive feminism that brought women into the workplace and politics. They make no declarations. Instead they present evidence and examine arguments. This is an important work in ethics, gender studies, and history. It deserves wide readership, media exposure, and discussion in academe.
47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scholarship as sexual warfare,
By Michael "olustee" (Wisconsin, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men (Hardcover)
One of the more intriguing questions which this massive and massively-researched volume will raise in the months and years to come is the degree to which it will be politicized, i.e., viewed as a salvo "in favor of" males in a gender war conceived by academic feminists as a marxist political-group war between oppressors and oppressed. Academic feminist scholarship explicitly has an activist political agenda, which means among other things that it opportunistically exploits the tolerance of the modern university in the name of pursuit of an ethic of truth-seeking in order to advance what can be called an ethic of power-seeking. In that context, "Legalizing Misandry" will be seen by academic feminists as "just another" (though necessarily formidable) blow aimed at resisting feminist attack strategy in behalf of the enemy (no quotes) male.
Perhaps the single most important thing Nathonson and Young do is refuse to draw back from saying that academic feminists--most of the feminists they discuss are professional scholar-teachers, most with PhDs--are unabashed hatemongers. In going so far they only stop short of annoncing that the "gender war" is in no way a metaphor, that feminists are just as determined to wreak damage on males as they contend males are determined to wreak on them. In a way, it will be interesting to see just how far this gauntlet thrown down to academic feminists will be picked up by them and responded to. To admit that feminists are explicitly anti-male, for instance, is to open up the whole academic industry of "Women' Studies"--which includes the female professors who teach in them--to the charge that they violate federal, state, and institutional regulations against hostile environment sexual harassment. We may yet see female professors, and indeed female management types in the workplace, banished like males have been to the shadowy darkness of having sexual harassment charges on their resumes, with all the attendant difficulty of getting new jobs that this implies. It would indeed be ironic that feminists would suffer the same fate, since it was precisely feminist activists who formulated, brokered, and finally put into the U. S. code of federal regulations these very sexual harassment laws. The tone of "Legalizing Misandry" is considerbly more outspoken, even edgy, by comparison with that of the preceding volume "Spreading Misandry." Clearly, the co-authors find themselves less able than previously to maintain the cold distance of investigative impersonality when dealing with the vast evidence that we have on our hands in Canada and U. S. nothing less than a civil war founded on gender. That it is a war--so far--without combat should not be allowed to dilute this characterization on the assumption that war is always combat. There's a difference--you can have one without the other--and that's what Nathanson and Young end up describing in overwhelming detail. It's a real war, and this book may go a considerable distance to persuading a critical mass of North American males finally to recognize that fact.
70 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dense scholarship on a timely topic.,
This review is from: Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men (Hardcover)
Misandry: hatred of men. Legalizing Misandry is a large, dense, thoroughly documented scholarly work that lays out the history of the legal shift in the US and Canada from one of equality under law to one of females first, men go away. For men it's pretty depressing to confront all the many ways that men no longer get justice or anything resembling fair treatment under law. Nathanson and Young use examples of highly publicized (read: media feeding frenzy) bellwether cases that have been used as excuses to shift our laws more and more against men. From the daycare witch hunts of the 1980s to Marc Lepine's counter attack on feminism, the authors show how these bellwether cases were used by misandrist political forces to enact more and more misandrist laws. They document how misandry is now the basic law in entitlements, marriage, divorce, and child care, pornography and prostitution, sexual harassment, abuse, violence and even murder. They suggest that no sane man who really knew the legal ramifications would even consider marriage under such misandrist law. They document how political and moral misandry is being taught at every college and university under the front names of "women's studies," "gender studies," etc. They show how "equality" has come to mean female dominance, and how the feminist lesbians who control radical feminism won't be satisfied until men are eliminate altogether. As a man I found it really depressing to review all the many places where hatred of men is codified into law and promoted by my tax money. This is a serious scholarly work with hundred of detailed footnotes and references. It needs to be part of every discussion of law and education. Their hard hitting honesty and the history of how misandry became the law of our lands is the opposite of feminist PC dogma. I'm sure that instead, it will be shunned by the misandrists who control education and law. I strongly recommend it for anyone who is a serious student of law, politics, education, or gender studies. And, it ought to be read by every man who considers getting within 500 yards of a female, it's scary and depressing.
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